A liberating breeze of western civilisation? : a political history of fundamental pedagogics as an expression of Dutch-Afrikaner relationships.

Abstract

Fundamental pedagogics was the only education theory that was taught to the vast

majority of student teachers during the apartheid era. This exclusivity was consciously

created and maintained in the context of Christian National Education. The proponents

of fundamental pedagogics attempted to legitimise their theory by invoking the work of

the Dutch educator, M.J. Langeveld.

At first glance, there is indeed a remarkable resemblance between Langeveld's pedagogy

and fundamental pedagogics. This thesis investigates why similar-sounding statements of

the two pedagogies turn out to mean something quite different in their distinctive

contexts.

Previously, critics have analysed fundamental pedagogics as if it were a South African

invention. Its Dutch origins, diffusion and reinterpretation were lost in these analyses.

This study emphasises and investigates the Dutch roots of fundamental pedagogics and

traces its historical journey from Holland to South Africa. This journey, set between

1881 and 1963, is presented in two historical narratives, both constructed around unique

data sources.

This thesis presents fundamental pedagogics as an adaptation, arguably a distortion, of

Dutch education theory, mediated largely by politically conservative and racist forces.

The largely indiscriminate adoption of the rhetoric of Dutch social thought showed a

disrespect for the complexity of the relationship between pedagogical theories and their

site of production. Langeveld's education theory was developed in the context of post

Second World War Holland on a modernist and social democracy ticket. Fundamental

pedagogics emerged in apartheid South Africa in an ethnic-nationalist and racist

environment. These divergent meanings clearly expose pedagogy as a political as well as

an educational project.

This study concludes that the attempt to legitimise fundamental pedagogics by invoking

its Dutch roots failed. Some of the central claims and assumptions of the original theory

were abandoned to accommodate apartheid conditions.